


Lisa Snippets

by TopHat



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Break Up, Coping Mechanisms, F/F, F/M, Love Triangles, Unofficial Relationships, old people romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:54:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23236534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TopHat/pseuds/TopHat
Summary: Where uncategorized Lisa snips go.
Relationships: Dean Stansfield | Gallant/Lisa Wilbourn | Tattletale, Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver/Lisa Wilbourn | Tattletale, Victoria Dallon | Glory Girl/Dean Stansfield | Gallant, Victoria Dallon | Glory Girl/Lisa Wilbourn | Tattletale
Comments: 2
Kudos: 40





	1. Foxes and Glory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lisa X Victoria, unofficial relationship.

Lisa is waiting.  
  
She is sitting in a cafe, enjoying a coffee not quite as much as its price tag demands, dressed in clothes perhaps a bit too expensive for something as small as a date, daydreaming. It is her favorite part of their little rendezvous, a time when she can let her mind spring out of proportion, where she can let loose her power completely. With a target Lisa cannot help but shatter illusions, cannot help but find out the worst, cannot help but feel a dejected pessimism towards potential paramores. Independent of a true subject, the chain of information turns from a scalpel to a paint brush, illustrating half a hundred futures in knife-sharp detail.  
  
Lisa sighs, an absent-minded smile coming to her mouth, and lowers her barriers.  
  
The first thing, as always, is the time. She is sure of the hour, the place, the date of the date (she snorts to herself, gazing through the other patrons without seeing them) but checks her phone anyway. A thrill runs through her, bubbles and dandelion seeds, when she confirms that yes, this is the moment, this is the address, this is the day she and Victoria agreed upon. Lisa sees the freely-sacrificed freedom in the numbers, sees stories and logical chains spinning off into tantalizing lies about both her and Victoria, sees what they both willingly gave up to meet. Lisa never asked, never pried for more than what the glances at numbers gave her, and Victoria never offered. Always the threat of an other loomed, the threat of something greater than Lisa, but the blade had yet to fall and for now Lisa is the most important thing in Victoria’s life. That is enough.  
  
Once Lisa establishes the correctness of the situation, passion comes next. Will she spring from her seat in a torrent of half-formed sentences and jabber, playing the part of the vapid girlfriend that alternatively irritates and arouses Victoria? Wait for a polite, teasing cough before deigning to acknowledge her date, aloof and yet not, prodding the other girl with the subtle challenge of ‘piercing’ Lisa’s frosty exterior? Pull a piece of Victoria’s day off of her chosen dress, off her precise expression, and place the golden girl at the center of the conversation, a chance for them both to blow off steam and rant about the stupidity of the world? An infinite supply of greetings, each with its own nuances and treasures, and Lisa can pick but one to initiate.  
  
There is the after, of course. The wander, the walk, the excess of capitalism that they’re both permitted, one that’s more about spending time than spending money. They’ll find clothes, listen politely to the performers clean enough to dodge the enforcers, tease each other over misspoken words and errors in and out of costume, and appear to the world as little more than friends. When the bars start opening up the two of them will turn to mischief, mixing bursts of insight with blasts of awe, working their way through unsuspecting and much-deserving targets to relieve them of their wallets. It’s a con, one which is a little outside of both of their comfort zones, and for that reason it is perfect. A theft Lisa could do on her own, a beating from Victoria was trivial, and only the synthesis of the two fundamentally heroic acts required teamwork.  
  
Victoria had been mortified the first time Lisa had phrased it like that. And the second time. And every time after that.  
  
It really never got old.  
  
Eventually it would be late, too late to find hustlers to knock over, too late to find Empire members stumbling home with pockets full of cash, too late to do anything but yawn. After an indeterminate time had passed with no action, Victoria would scoop Lisa up in her arms and take to the skies. Lisa could’ve skipped the games entirely, but for Vicky they were special.  
  
It had cost Lisa an arm and a leg to get a top-floor condo in Downtown. Even with the PRT’s assistance, even with a few games at casinos she officially didn’t know about, even with a discreet off-the-books raid on an ABB warehouse, purchasing the place outright had left Lisa’s bank account empty. She’d slept on an air mattress for months, slowly furnishing the hardwood floors with what was left over from the consulting paychecks, until she was able to walk through the place and feel at home. It took too much time to ascend and descend, the view only mattered when she was cognizant enough to appreciate it (a vanishingly rare occurrence), and it attracted more attention from the IRS than anyone wanted.  
  
She liked flying though, and the barest excuse to take to the air was worth it.  
  
They’d land on the gravel, air cold and arms warm. Lisa would get them through the roof access, Vicky would start getting handsy on the way down, and by the time they arrived at the front door Lisa would be whining in desperation, fumbling at the card reader while Victoria nibbled at her ear and traced patterns along her thighs, whispering promises and near-threats as each feather-light touch grew closer and closer to-  
  
Lisa cuts off her power.  
  
For all that imagination, all that information pulled from the aether, the fantasies always play out the same way. Each story hits the same beats, has the same ups and downs, and ends incomplete. Part of that is the desire not to spoil anything, how she doesn’t want to disrupt the foreplay. Another part is practical, the winnowing of alternative possible realties proven too unlikely to consider. Lisa has to watch her power, make sure its extrapolation still makes sense when exposed to common sense.  
  
A final part is fear, because Lisa wants to avoid thinking too hard about the other branches on the tree of time too ambitious to name.  
  
The door to the cafe opens, and a girl in a gold and black leather jackets steps in. She has sunglasses and a scarf to hide her hair but it is unmistakably Victoria, if dressed for a day on anonymity.  
  
If anyone asked, Lisa would tell them it was her power.  
  
“Hey you.”  
  
“Hey yourself. How’s it going?”  
  
“Oh, you know. Same old, same old. If you were any more disguised I’d feel offended.”  
  
“If I was any less disguised I’d have to formally invite you to dinner with my family and try to convince you to become part of our business.”  
  
“So is that what they’re calling it these days? ‘Becoming part of our business?’”  
  
“I mean, that’s if I were to ask you formally.”  
  
“Are we?”  
  
“Lisa, do you want to blow this joint and go shopping?”  
  
“I thought you’d never ask.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Victoria is waking up.  
  
She is lying in warm sheets, enjoying the presence of the body next to her, flush with the morning-after glow of a night well-spent, daydreaming. It is her favorite part of their little rendezvous, a time when she can forget the importance of appearances, where she can lose herself completely in the moment. There are no cameras to be wary of, no one to impress, and no reason to do anything other than what she wants.  
  
Victoria sighs, the breath rustling blonde locks in front of her, and lets herself imagine.  
  
She imagines that the warmth between her arms, pressing into her chest, and tangled up in her legs, is her partner. That Lisa is someone Mom knows, that Dad knows, that Amy knows. Victoria imagines that everyone knows about Lisa and accepts it, that it’s just a fact, that everything has been settled. Victoria imagines that this creature, the wonderful girl that alternatively drives her insane with frustration and despondent with longing, has become a feature of her life, and that no one minds.  
  
Lisa’s arrival into Victoria’s sphere is necessarily followed by a transformational sort of happiness. It will be their bed, their condo, their taxes, a synthesis of individuals that culminates in a single word which somehow encapsulates two very different people. There were hundreds of reasons to get together from a practical standpoint, and making it official would just be good sense.  
  
The fact that Lisa will help with New Wave goes almost without saying, but the addition of a heavy-weight thinker to their lineup would fundamentally alter how the team operated. Where New Wave was a shield before, trying to cover enough territory to remain relevant without spreading too thin, now they’d be able to attack, to find targets and drag them out into the daylight. A change in strategy that would let them get taken seriously, which might lead to lasting good rather than stemmed bleeding.  
  
More important would be the little things. Figuring out how to organize their respective shower supplies, or quibbling over the opening sentence of an essay, or the titles of the movies they’d watch the nights they were both too drained to do anything fancy, or finding positions on the couch where they were close enough to touch without being so close they couldn’t get anything done, or the hundred and one details that Victoria got a glimpse at when Lisa cast off her sheets and went about her morning, idiosyncrasies which she didn’t think twice about but which could haunt Victoria’s mind for days.  
  
Lisa twitches, mumbling incoherently and trying to twist in Victoria’s arms. Victoria squeezes tighter and kisses all the exposed skin she can see, murmuring soothing nothings until Lisa settles back down, a contented hum rumbling through her chest, and once more goes to sleep. Victoria feels Lisa’s breathing slow to the steady pace of REM, and once she’s certain the other girl is back to rest smiles against her hair.  
  
“You’re impossible, you know. Completely impossible.”  
  
The only response is a twitch of Lisa’s legs.  
  
Victoria’s smile falls a little. It is a story, a daydream, an extremely elaborate and persuasive lie that is still a lie. Big things, small things, both obscure reality. She need only remember them.  
  
Lisa is not a hero. She is not a villain, not insofar as Victoria can tell, but when she does good it is by coincidence or because of something other than decency. In that way she is like so many people, living life and doing her best not to leave the world worse for her passing, with a few subjects that she doesn’t turn a blind eye to. With her power that attention translates into saved lives, but she could save more by taking on a little more risk. A strict definition of hero, but Victoria has high standards, and they’re ones that Lisa fails to meet.  
  
Amy would come around to Lisa. It’d take wheedling, bribery, and more favors than she cared to think about, but her sister could understand not wanting to be owned by a power. Dad would be good or bad depending on the day, but Victoria figured things would average north of neutral. Mark liked meeting new people, and Lisa would adopt him on sight. Carol, however, would never accept a rogue. Her sense of right and wrong was too strong, too inflexible, and the idea of leaving an asset untapped because of an intangible feeling of wrongness would be nonsense to her. She would press Victoria to ask, to look for opportunities, to try her luck at recruiting her girlfriend. The only sacred cows were the law and public opinion, and unless Lisa decided to go thermonuclear with the internet there was a lot of wiggle room between those two for Carol to try to play the mother-in-law card. Hell, she had barely been dating Dean for a week when Carol floated the idea of asking his dad for funding.  
  
Victoria swallows, aura flickering on for just a moment, and she hugs Lisa a little closer.  
  
Dean.  
  
“You know, if you wanted to wake me up there are better ways than a blast of ‘fuck me’ in the morning.”  
  
“I mean, are there?”  
  
“I mean, you could fuck me.”  
  
“That was bad and you should feel bad.”  
  
“I’d rather feel good, all things considered. Can you oblige?”  
  
“Your request is my command.”  
  
“Oh really now? Because I can think of a few requests that I haven’t quite fulfilled...”


	2. Spiders in the Library

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smugbug, MiddleAge!AU.

There were times, Lisa reflected, reclining in an overstuffed armchair in a nightgown while staring at a half-full glass of wine that had been emptied too many times that evening, where it was really, _really_ hard to stay retired.  
  
New capes were always tempting. Specifically the first-gen parahumans, the ones who had to get really fucked up, who tended to have both the power and the motivation to shatter the status quo. A burst of her power, a few questions to Aiden’s network of little birds, and she could end up with that cape’s general base of operations, half a dozen ways to bring them into the Undersider’s fold, and their favorite brand of booze just to sweeten the deal. It wouldn’t go like that (because nothing ever went according to plan), but sooner or later they’d bend to her will. That or she’d have them chased out of town, but that was Bitch’s job.  
  
Lisa grimaced and downed the rest of the wine. More than a decade later and it still hurt to think about Rachel. A million questions, a million reasonable answers, and the guilt hadn’t left her yet. She’d talked to a professional, gotten as much of the recursive thinking out of her head as possible, and sometimes Lisa could go for days without stumbling across one of her old screw-ups.  
  
She wasn’t sure she should be happy about that.  
  
Lisa pushed the glass away and stood up. Slowly. Her joints ached as she re-corked the bottle and took the wine back to the kitchen. Everything had gotten harder as the years started piling up, from struggling into skinny jeans to running for her life. Once the alcohol was put away Lisa put on the kettle and pulled out two mugs, one purple with a black eye of Thoth, one black with a yellow spider web.  
  
The restlessness was worse for Taylor. At least Lisa could take an afternoon off and wreak havoc on the electronic assets of whichever group of knuckleheads tried to move on the Bay. At least she could still wage her little wars, however briefly, without getting back into the black and purple catsuit that probably didn’t fit anymore. At least she could call up Aiden, ask for some questions, and answer them without making a target of herself. The kid was good with opsec like that.  
  
Lisa grinned as the kettle whistled. Kid. Aiden was forty now, ancient in cape-years, and he still went by the name Chicken Little. A complete dweeb, albeit a dweeb who’d inherited her empire. If he heard her calling him kid she’d be liable to get her daffodils torn up by a flock of crows.  
  
The front door unlocked and Lisa’s smile vanished.  
  
“How was your walk?” she called, pouring near-boiling water into each mug, then taking both back to the dining room, pointedly not looking at Taylor. Lisa took the seat that left her back to the door and picked out a pair of tea bags, tore off their paper covers, and dropped them in to steep. After a few long moments Taylor slid into the light.  
  
She was back in costume. That was the first thing Lisa had noticed. That and the spiders. Taylor had gotten into the habit of cloaking herself in insects in her later years, of never letting any creature go if she could at all help it. She’d cut back once things settled down and their stranglehold had become all but unbreakable but Lisa had still been forced to get used to the glass cases of exotic insects that lined the walls.  
  
Now Taylor looked like Skitter in her prime. She was dressed in a grey-black bodysuit, with a heavy mantle and a knee-length skirt, both positively crawling with many-legged monsters, and segmented armor dotted strike points and vital areas. It wasn’t a perfect image, marred by the strands of silver veined her hair, a few wrinkles lurked at the edges of her eyes that weren’t there a few decades ago, but her eyes were the same: brown, intense, and as merciful as the barrel of a gun.  
  
Lisa sighed and waved her hand dismissively. “No common bugs in the house. Out with them. And sit down, I don’t know how long you’ve been out for this time but my knees are killing me and I’ve just been sitting here waiting for you to get your wiggles out and come back to bed.”  
  
The facade cracked and Taylor looked away, insects flowing off of her and into the shadows. Lisa hid her shudders as she imagined one crawling over her foot. A quarter century of marriage and the bugs still creeped her out. She had more information than most on exactly how bad those bugs could be, but still...  
  
Taylor settled into the chair next to Lisa, wrapping her clawed fingers around the ceramic.  
  
Lisa let the quiet drag out, content to let Taylor stew for a bit. She tried the tea. A little weak. Lisa let the crushed leaves sit for a minute longer, then pulled the used bag out and tossed it into a trash can.  
  
“I don’t go out much,” Taylor said, staring into her mug.  
  
Lisa nodded. “If you don’t take out your bag soon, it’s going to be too strong.”  
  
“We picked this place because of the low crime rate,” Taylor continued, twirling the thread around a finger. “The odds of running into anything were extraordinarily low. I kept within a five block radius, stayed out of the light, had my phone on vibrate, scouted ahead with bugs—”  
  
Lisa reached across the table and took Taylor’s hand, old skin giving against hardened carapace. “I’m not mad.”  
  
The silence returned, this time comfortable.  
  
“I know it’s hard to stay still,” Lisa continued, running the pad of her thumb over Taylor’s knuckles. “What do you think I do in between greenhouse projects? Knit? No, there’s only so much gardening I can do before the urge to destroy someone’s life over the internet becomes too much. I’m not going to throw up my hands over a few midnight walks.”  
  
Her fingers paused. “I’d just like to know in the future. From you, not my power. Wake me up if you have to. Maybe it’s not as organic, but if really want a fight I’m sure that Aiden can find something for us to do.” She squeezed. “So long as it’s us, okay?”  
  
Taylor squeezed back. “I’ll do that.” She took a sip of her tea and grimaced. “You were right. Too strong.”  
  
“Waste the tea, come to bed?” Lisa asked, one corner of her lip twitching up.  
  
“You just don’t want to do the dishes,” Taylor countered, nonetheless standing up and gathering up the mugs.  
  
Lisa pushed herself up, tossing her hair over her shoulders. “You know me so well. It’s almost like we’re an old married couple.”  
  
Taylor sighed as she poured the tea down the sink and rinsed out the cups. “You know, there’s a finite number of times you can make that joke before it stops being funny.”  
  
A rustle of cloth on cloth was the only warning Taylor got before something soft impacted the back of her head. After she’d placed both mugs on the drying rack blind, Taylor pulled the offending object away from her face.  
  
A nightgown, still warm.  
  
It smelled faintly of lavender.  
  
“Lose the armor and I’ll show you all the reasons to keep laughing at my jokes,” Lisa called from the bedroom. “Hurry up, I hear old people fall asleep fast.”  
  
Despite herself Taylor smiled, folding the cloth and placing it aside for the morning. “Coming, dear.”  
  
A laugh echoed out, deeper than it had been so many years ago and no less wonderful for it. “Not yet you aren’t.”


	3. Reynard and Shallot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean X Lisa, Break Up, unofficial relationship.

Victoria put down her drink, staring into the empty mug. “I think we should take a break.”  
  
Dean nodded, already hollowing out. It was a familiar feeling, painful but not unexpected. He and Victoria went through ups and downs, some comparable to the other couples at Arcadia, others too extreme for anyone who didn’t have powers to understand. They’d tried riding the harder sections out before, tried sticking together when they could barely stand to look at one another, and every time they ended up drifting apart anyway. After the third time it happened the two of them had decided to skip the painful middle period and both take some time alone. “Sorry.”  
  
Victoria sighed, digging out her wallet to cover the bill. In the good times he’d pay on dates. They both knew he had money, knew that their parents would have no objection to the exchange, and they both enjoyed a little teasing over the act. When things were medium they’d split the small stuff, a way of affirming that they were choosing to be together. It was a small thing, one which had sparked surprisingly few arguments, and which served as a pretty good measuring tool for how their relationship was going.  
  
The fact that she left enough to cover both his and her drinks did not bode well.  
  
Dean sat there for a few minutes after she left, not thinking about anything in particular. Then he stood up, shrugged on his coat, and pulled out his phone. Not the one issued to Wards, not the one his father got him, but something smaller. Unremarkable. Anonymous.  
  
 _The Tower. 9._  
  


* * *

  
  
It took a minute for Lisa to find the precise phone that had gone off. After yanking open the ‘Personal’ drawer and digging out the device with power-guided fingers, she took two seconds to examine the text before deleting it. She let her head drop against the filing cabinet, the irritation at being disturbed fading into empathic regret, and sagged.  
  
For a moment, Lisa held the pose.  
  
Then she pushed back up to standing, put the phone back, and started getting ready.  
  
The first step was a shower. After that, clothes. Black nylons, small heels, and a red dress that covered both shoulders and showed a modest amount of cleavage. Makeup, the expensive kind, which took forever to apply and wasn’t always available in Brockton Bay. On the way out the door she switched purses, trading the purple bag for a brown, understated satchel with room for her gun.  
  
By the time she made it through Downtown traffic it was closer to nine thirty than nine. Parking very nearly didn’t happen, and it was only after Dean called the lot attendant himself that Lisa was able to hand over her keys and head into the Tower proper.  
  
Lisa, before her name change, had never considered herself poor. Maybe her family could’ve been a little more well-off (her parents had certainly thought so) but at no point had she gone hungry. She hadn’t needed any material good excessively, and if she wanted something she could generally have it by saving and waiting. After living on the streets those simple luxuries gained new importance, and she’d consider herself even richer.  
  
Then she’d stumbled into the company of the heir to the Stansfield corporation.  
  


* * *

  
  
When Dean had learned to cook, his father had considered it a productive waste of time. An oxymoron, but only if you ignored the context. There was wasting time, and then there was wasting time. The former was done alone, pointlessly, in some such way that could never be expected to return on investment. The later was another type of networking disguised as a hobby, typically something collaborative that didn’t require too much brain power. Golf was an excellent waste of time, as were sailing, horseback riding, and wine tasting. The last option could simply be extended to social drinking as a whole but that was for parties, which were entirely separate from wasting time.  
  
Dean didn’t like sharing the kitchen. He liked knowing where each individual utensil was, and having more people inevitably meant a disruption, either because he had to maneuver around the other person cooking with him or because they’d taken the ladle out of its spot for no reason or because they’d mixed up cinnamon and cumin and now he had to account for that.  
  
That last point, the issue of administration, that had been the fulcrum of Dean’s argument for a place of his own. He needed a space where he could be the master of his own domain, exercise control over his own schedule, and in order to do that he couldn’t be forced to run every potential meeting by his parents. Gaining experience in personal time management, he’d called it. A valuable skill.  
  
His father had seen through the bullshit right away but it’d been the sort of bullshit he wanted, and inside of a week Dean had a furnished apartment in Downton leased under his name.  
  
It was the little victories that Dean savored. Having a supply his own clothes. Cooking his own food, good or bad. Being able to vent to the people he choose, and not having to sanitize it. All things that made him feel less like a caged bird.  
  
And then he had a place to do it.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Sorry I’m late. Traffic.”  
  
“No worries, the mac’n’cheese just came out of the oven.”  
  
“Beef, green and red peppers, some jalapeños, and more pepper than is entirely reasonable. Someone needs to stop you.”  
  
“There’s a garden salad as a side in the fridge, right above the left-over Tupperware, and any time you want to cook the meal you’re welcome to. No take-out.”  
  
“What’s the point of having tons of money if you don’t pay people to do things for you?”  
  
“When you say tons of money, do you mean my father’s tons of money?”  
  
“What’s the point of having friends with rich parents if they don’t buy you things?”  
  
“The earnest companionship, trust, and emotional affirmation?”  
  
“You’re such a romantic.”  
  
“I try very hard to be.”  
  
“And sometimes it doesn’t work.”  
  
“No. Sometimes it doesn’t.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Lisa woke up with her head resting on Dean’s chest and contemplated what she knew about him.  
  
He was Gallant. That had been made painfully clear on their first meeting out of costume. He was genuinely gallant, something she’d suspected but never confirmed before enjoying his pot roast. He was the sole heir to the Stansfield family, and that the title had as many requirements as it did benefits. He was a thinker/blaster hybrid, not a tinker, and couldn’t turn his emotion sensing power off. These were all matters of public knowledge, or at least public knowledge in that you didn’t have to meet Dean to know it.  
  
What wasn’t so public was the birthmark on his upper bicep, or how his body hair was blond instead of brown. Lisa would bet money that almost no one knew about the mild backne he had, or about his strange aversion to milk chocolate. He was ambidextrous, but only in the sense that he was right-hand dominant for cooking and left-hand dominant for typing on his phone.  
  
She was also pretty sure that he didn’t speak as frankly about his friends with everyone else.  
  
Lisa was good with solitude. Her secrets were meant to stay secret, and days could go by without her talking to anyone else. It was a little quiet but her power functioned best with solitude, and at the end of the day she found it relaxing. It wasn’t for everybody though, and certainly not for Dean.  
  
Their meetings would start off with jokes, good conversation, and better food. Then they’d crack open a bottle of wine more expensive than most clothes Lisa wore and get tipsy enough to feel comfortable spilling their secrets. Dean would sob away his latest break up, Lisa would bitch and moan about her clients, one of them would misplace a hand in a gesture of solidarity gone very right, and then it was off to the bedroom.  
  
Neither of them wanted more than that. Dean had too much baggage for her tastes, and she was too much in the grey for him. The occasional evening, not more than once every few months, was enough for both of them. Thinker powers had a way of forcing people apart, and they headed off the problem by never getting together.  
  
Well, not really.


End file.
